Campaign issues/questions/suggestions

[suleo]

First of all let me say that this game is great! I've enjoyed it immensely.

Now on to some issues with the campaings (I fly cap ships so all my issues/comments are regarding those). I've noticed that every time a mission starts, all ships face due north. This includes my squadron, other allied squadrons and enemy squadrons. Now, this is not a big deal, UNLESS you start with an enemy 80km behind you. By the time you turn around, you're more or less dead. Now this also works the other way around, i.e. you start 80km behind an enemy, by the time shields are up and he turns around, he's dead. Some more variety/randomness in the initial placement could help a little bit in avoiding those 'instant death' cases.

The above situation was really exagerrated in a recent mission on the 4th campaign. I had just wiped out the first of the two markan fleets and so switched to the 2nd fleet. I noticed that 4 friendly squadrons AND 4 enemy squadrons were at the same system. Now, with so many ships in the system, I would expect they would have detected each other some time ago. However, there had been NO engagements until I actively took command of one of the cruiser squadrons (I could see from the OOB that all ships were intact, and they had 0 sorties). Which brings me to my second point: If a human is not involved, it seems that the campaign engine doesn't generate enough missions. Surely enough, when I joined and started the mission, enemy and friendly ships were all over the place (after all, we're talking 16 ships per side). It was a fragfest (again, due to placement, some ships died instantly). But until I had joined, absolutely nothing!

Finally, an issue involving quantum jumps. There have been several occurances when I have ordered all my ships to jump and then jumped myself, and I found my ship jumping ON TOP of another allied ship. The net result is that the ships are entangled, no ship can move but they are also undamaged. I believe it would be beneficial if the quantum positioning was a little more random than it is now, to avoid cases like that.

Anyway, as I said the game is great and I am having a blast playing it. And those are mostly minor issues but it would be nice if they were improved/fixed [8D]

[TheJoat]

Can I start a campaign as a commander instead of a fighter pilot? I do not want to be a pilot....

[Master]

No you must rank up with your fighter pilot until you have enough rank to get the capitol ships. If it helps just think of your fighter as a REALLY small capitol ship

[Mr.Frag]

No you must rank up with your fighter pilot until you have enough rank to get the capitol ships. If it helps just think of your fighter as a REALLY small capitol ship

If you are having real problems, play some individual missions and get your rank up that way. Doesn't take too long to be flying DD's.

[TheJoat]

Thanks. What rank do I have to get to? And how many points is that?

[Mr.Frag]

Thanks. What rank do I have to get to? And how many points is that?

Think you only need 10 or 20 k to get command of the DD groups, not too tough, less then 10 missions of the DD fight.

[TheJoat]

Dang.

I really got this game to play multiplayer. It appears to me that I cannot be a fighter pilot in multiplayer, so I've got to practice command. But I can't get to do that until I fly a bunch of fighter missions?

How about the next patch you allow us to take command of a destroyer, at least?

[John DiCamillo]

There are no rank restrictions for multiplayer or single player stand-alone missions. The rank restrictions only apply to the dynamic campaign.

I don't understand why you have the impression that you cannot be a fighter pilot in multiplayer. Two of the multiplayer missions are nothing but fighters - Hawkmatch and Fighter Thrash Pit. If you are connecting to a War Games scenario, there are no fighter packages in the initial simulation, but the carriers will create and launch some after a few minutes. Unless you are hosting, you should be able to drop out of the sim and reconnect as any of the fighter packages in the scenario.

Please let me know if I have helped in confusing you further. [;)]

[TheJoat]

Milo.
Ah, that does help. It would be nice to play the campaign as a commander, but I guess I'll have to wait for some rank.

I did not try reconnecting to be a fighter in the war games. That should be interesting.